Training at Gold's Gym in Venice, California, the "Mecca of bodybuilding" for more than two decades, I have had the opportunity to encounter some of the most ingenious, if not ludicrous, contraptions a welder could assemble. . . operated by some of the wildest beings to ever cinch up a lifting belt. The allure of these "weight machines" was the promise of being able to hit a muscle group with a previously unattainable angle and resistance range that was sure to increase the mass of said muscle group far better and more safely than standard lifts with free weights. The more outrageous the concept, the more outlandish it's devotees, their costumes, and accessories. Many rivaled anything you could find on Halloween night in West Hollywood.
This was way before the days of computer engineering that turned out such acclaimed marks as Hammer Strength, Cybex, Nebula, and the like. These were machines designed by pure moxie, and feel, and gut instinct, that promulgated the idea that if it had never been tried it had to work better than anything traditional. All anyone had to do to dash this notion was appreciate the fact that former Mr. Olympia, Franco Colombo, had the most insanely built upper chest with - a split between his upper and lower pecs - that was the freakiest in the business, even by today's standards. This magnificent development was not the product of some type of high tech resistance machinery, but merely because of a broken bench press. When he first starting lifting weights in Sardinia, the only bench press in the gym had the back legs broken off. The only way to use it was to lean it up on the window sill, thus availing him only to incline bench presses. So the story goes.
Nevertheless, these wonders of ancient technology were showcased - usually for free - at Gold's, without even the slightest bit of instruction for their use. Incredibly, they were somehow mastered by devout maniacs who devised insane techniques to rack up the poundages and set records with lifts that today could only be bested on the weight pile with construction equipment. Many times these accomplishments were met with a rather steep price tag. This is one of those stories.
Long before poverty had driven most of us into the real world of car payments and domestic anguish, replacing four hour workouts with 40 minute body blasts and 40 hour work weeks, a guy we called "Rubber Tendon," so named because of the incredible stress his pectoral tendons could take without snapping like the high "E" string on Fender Voodoo Stratocaster during a Hendrix solo, defined the best living example of machine loyalty (and its dangers). The device he called home was a bazaar, yet kind of cool plate loaded chest machine of an anonymous and long gone brand. It was a gigantic, menacing structure that took up an inordinate amount of space at the dead center of the gym. It perched the user some six feet off the deck on a "padded" seat that was about twice as soft as a cedar shake and half as wide. It had two long curved handles that operated independently of each other that connected to a series of counter balanced levers that hoisted a stack of weights up underneath and to the rear of the user with a surprisingly long and smooth motion that extended well beyond the biomechanics of even Harry Houdini. Aside from its shit-brindled-brown color, the thing actually looked really cool, and if it had wheels and a 102 inch Big Twin, I'd have bought one and ridden it to the Rock Store on Sundays.
Ole' Rubber Tendon - or "RT" as he was also known - all of five-three, a buck-eighty-five, and not a penny to show for it, took an unshakeable fancy to training his chest on this invention, partly because he could lift unspeakable weights with it and partly because he could do so stuck high enough up in the air so that everyone could see him. Eventually it became "his machine" and if you wanted to use it you had to wait till he was done. "Done" was somewhere after 10 or 15 sets, in addition to the requisite chalking, wrapping, belt tightening and psyching up in between that surely lasted longer than he could stay warm. Yet nonetheless, all pilgrims to Mecca would yield to Rubber Tendon, usually just to see if he would snap something. That day eventually did come one September afternoon, but before it did, RT amazed us all by slamming unspeakable weights back so far that his elbows nearly touched behind his back, then rifling it back up nearly three-quarters of the way by sheer recoil peppered only slightly with brute strength somewhere near the top. The probability that something would go wrong would have only been less if Evil Knievel was jumping 85 cars with a Sportster in a parking lot in Vegas 20% too small.
By late summer, RT had decided that every other Sunday would be "record day," and he would endeavor to lift a one rep max that would cripple a Clydesdale, and surly rip the pec tendons out of Superman. Eventually, these record lifts were to be attempted wearing an official power lifting bench press shirt that required the assistance of three stout men and a container of baby powder to get on. Once squeezed into it, his arms sticking almost straight out at his sides, the shenanigans would really shift into high gear. A crowd would inevitably gather and RT would hit his stride employing fifty parts of daring for one part wit as he just let go of huge weights that nearly folded him in two down the middle, and somehow rebounded back up to the start position with a plaintive grunt that sounded like a yak in heat.
I happened upon Rubber Tendon early on one of these super Sundays and was unwittingly recruited into his cadre of assistance, mainly to help him in and out of that insanely tight suit. Spotting on that contraption was virtually impossible. That was just fine with RT - if he bagged the weight, he did it without question. On his final big lift of the day, he slammed a huge number of plates back so far they actually hit the stops - supposedly an impossibility - and came to a dead stop. The lack of recoil and the inability of any of us to help him up with the weight put RT in a precarious situation. With a crowd of critics sure to tarnish his image forever should he fail, he had no choice but to really lift the damn weight. He pushed and pushed, and turned bright red. He squeezed and wheezed and fought for dear life. He begged God, Jesus, Mary, and all the disciples for help while stuck for what seemed like forever in the hole - until finally the shame of his imminent failure in front of such a gathering caused enough adrenaline to be released and he moved the weight back up to the top shaking and quivering all the way.
Rubber Tendon couldn't have been more spent if he had built the pyramids by himself on his lunch hour. A gang of us had to peel him up off the floor and yard his carcass out of that rubber suit only to find two odd lumps gathering under each side of his clavicle bathed in an increasingly dark red hue. Dr. J, the chiropractor in attendance, immediately diagnosed complete bilateral pec tears, and within minutes RT could barely move his tongue for the grievous pain. His trip out the door took almost an hour because he could only be moved in two foot bursts before curling into an agonizing knot. Eventually, he was loaded into a Jeep and hauled away. The last we ever saw of RT he was on his way to the ER with his arms folded over his chest like a Pharaoh; he never showed his mug at Gold's ever again.
A circus clown couldn't have dreamed up a more absurd way to ruin a lifting career. In the final analysis I always wondered if he had ever been exposed to proper training techniques in the first place that perhaps his pecs would have survived. But, in those days, everyone was trying to make a name for themselves, and some people thought all the conventional means were used up. So, they set out to do something extraordinary. Some of those guys ended up with notoriety like Jimmy The Bull. Others "snapped" and blended into obscurity only to be remembered in jest years later by guys like me.
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